Vindico
by RC Mason
Summary: The cool blade of the kunai slid glibly under the crook of Sasuke's neck, almost gently like a lover's touch. 'Maybe this is vengeance,' Hinata murmured. 'Vengeance for them and for everything that you have stolen from me.' SasuHina. Post-Shippuden.
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Disclaimer: _Naruto _is not mine. But this story is.

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><p><strong>Vindico<br>**

**~ by RC Mason ~  
><strong>

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><p><strong>1<strong>  
><em>Fallen hero with your exhausted powers,<em>

_In the shadows, I wait for hours._

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><p>It was on the fourth hour of the fourth day of the fourth month that he was appointed to die.<p>

The lots had been cast, the prayers offered to the gods, and when the copper die left the chanting priest's hands, they landed with harsh clunks on the cold stone floor and rolled to their sides to scream: _four! four! four! _

_(and the crowd cried: die! die! die!)_

Shackled to the damp dungeon walls below, with the iron chafing the pale skin at his wrists and ankles, it was these copper die, not the roaring approval of the crowd, that he heard. They echoed away, long after they fell, into the hollow chambers of his mind like funeral bells

_(__paving a way to hell_).

The rough stonework bit into his back as he leant his head against the wall, his raven black hair spilling over the eyes that were the same colour of the sunset that he would never again see. He drew a level breath in, inhaling the rotting dampness of the place, and let it out in a cool, delicate mist that traced the smoothness of his jaw, which hinted of the ancient aristocratic bloodline that ran through his veins. After a couple more languid breaths, it appeared that he was

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><p>'Sleeping!' snorted the guard, jabbing a fleshy finger over his shoulder. He was a hulk of heavy muscle, and he leered down at the unassuming girl before him, flexing the tendons in his shoulders as if to scare her off.<p>

The cherry lips, like a china doll's, pressed into a firm line.

'I would still like to see him.'

The voice was quiet, almost meek as it came from under the bowed head and downcast eyes, but there was a slicing edge to it, the barest trace of a fierce determination that cut the air and held it to a deadly ransom.

The sneering corners of the guard's mouth turned downwards and the lazy mockery vanished from his eyes, replaced instead with the brawny scowl he wore whenever his Authority was challenged. He thrust his right forearm forward, letting the jagged tattoo, an angry black circle with eight barbed wire stokes clawing over to his biceps, catch light from the flickering torches that hung by the dank walls of the dungeon.

'I'm a Sentry of the Alliance,' he proclaimed, arrogance propelling him to thrust his huge chest forward as well. It bulged against the black leather of the Sentry uniform, and he could not resist making a slow and deliberate show of placing a bear-like hand on the hilt of the glinting broadsword that hung from his belt.

Black water dripped from the ceiling, a dull thudding beat to a music that was not there.

The silence was submission to him, of course; the silly girl had finally understood _who _she was talking to and- why had his grip on his sword tightened?

'I'm a Blessèd Survivor,' she said finally, slipping it in smoothly like a serpent between covers.

She pushed back the sleeves of her dusky grey fur coat like unfolding a nightmare, revealing a small blood-red tattoo on the soft underside of her delicate wrist. It was shaped _almost_ like a pearly teardrop.

Blood rushed to his beefy face, the tanned and weathered skin not enough to hide the purple that swelled across his bulbous cheeks, colouring his face like a great livid bruise.

Then, with a snap of fabric, it was gone, and she stood there, as meek and unassuming as ever, her hands folded neatly in front of her, her eyes covered by the thick fringe of hair

_that was blue._

In the dingy darkness, he had assumed it was a peculiar shade of black, but it was as though the blood-drop tattoo had opened his eyes to everything that was strange about her. The hair that beckoned of squalls and strife, of stormy seas and tempest sky; the scars that drew jagged shapes on her hands and the calluses that filled them in; and the fact that she had dared to wander here all the way in and all the way alone …

A muscle spasm on his jaw and words spat out.

'Five minutes.'

'Fifteen.'

He clenched his fists and his wide nostrils flared out like a bellowing bull's. The rot of the place seeped into his nose and he was maddened suddenly by the outrageousness of it all. Stationed in the underground depths of a deserted prison with only one prisoner, not seeing daylight for days on end, cold all the time, the dampness always managing to find its way into his boots, and, _now_, badgered by some stranger with no other feat or claim to importance than being the _lucky _sole survivor of a village that had meddled in the old crafts and had it all coming-

Then, in a cold sweat that he would never admit, he realised that he could no longer see her hands.

'Fifteen then.' The words had shot out of his mouth and he flushed darkly again.

'Alone too.'

Now, the words sounded condescending and, in his mind, seemed to smile lewdly at him, exposing a long red devilish tongue smacking against small pointed teeth. Yet, the girl looked innocuous enough, still standing a few feet away and completely motionless as if she had not spoken at all.

Half-blind with rage, he curled his lips back to remind this _girlie_ exactly _who _she was talking to – and he remembered

_who _laid chained behind these bars

_(devil, demon, fiend)_

and he brought his lips back to bare his fangs in a smile of his own.

'Sure,' he said courteously, dropping the words like dripping poison. 'In fact,' he said as he produced a large shiny brass key out of a hidden pocket tucked beneath the layers of his tunic, a key that gleamed in the same way that his eyes gleamed, 'I might get some lunch after all. You can be in there for a whole _hour_. By _yourself._'

The girl made no motion, her long hair cascading down her hunched shoulders, a perfect blue veil, so he sniffed the dank air, looking for the emotion that he was so finely attuned to. _(fear)._

He smiled.

He thrust the brass key into the heavy lock and, with an exaggerated bow, gestured the girl in.

She hesitated but only for a bit. Those hunched shoulders straightened and she took the step in, dirty boots leaving entrails of mud and debris on the stone floor.

No sooner had she done so, there was a resounding clang of metal and a victorious swish of the key.

'Have fun,' his black eyes were dancing behind the locked bars. 'Oh, and, if you need anything, don't forget to _scream._' He had leaned in close for the last word, his voice dropping to hushed whisper, as if telling a dirty secret, and his breath tickling the hairs on the back of her neck.

His steps had a light spring as he strode down the windowless corridor, almost forgetting, for the first time in months, of the dampness that chewed at his thick socks and the blister that was festering at his heel.

He flung his head back, the fires catching this sudden movement and throwing his shadow against the coarsely cut walls, transforming it into a gigantic grotesque monster that laughed and laughed, its cackling echoing to the very end of the corridor, settling at the obscure cell where there was a girl who had a

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><p><em>Death wish.<em>

Secluded in the cell, Hinata finally threw her head back, her long hair immediately springing from her face to sweep gracefully behind her shoulders.

Thick veins throbbed around large, colourless eyes.

And, in her hand, there was a kunai that had been sharpened to a deadly precision.

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><p><strong>o<strong>

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><strong>

**The summary will change as this story unfolds, but I can confirm for now that this is a SasuHina fic, set somewhere post-Shippuden.**

**The chapters will be kept short, like the above, and I'm anticipating that there will about ten in all. Perhaps, when this is done, I'll merge it into a one-shot, but I like the brevity so far which allows me to make constant updates.**

**Anyway, please leave a review and let me know what you think ;)  
><strong>

**(Also, did anyone understand the reference to four?)**

**~ RC Mason.  
><strong>


	2. 2

Disclaimer: _Naruto _is not mine. But this story is.

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><p><strong>Vindico<br>**

**~ by RC Mason ~**

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><p><strong>2<strong>

_I look and find that everything's amiss,_

_How did it ever come to this?_

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><p>The Byakugan peeled away the shadows of the place and revealed the spectre in the midst.<p>

His arms were spread-eagled, held up by the iron manacles on the wall, as the rest of his body lay slumped against the floor, his head down and unmoving. He was clad in what once might have been white long-sleeved shirt and pants, but time and desolation had given them a pallid hue, a sickly-looking ash like those worn by the patients at the Konoha Hospital

_(which was gone, gone, gone)._

Gone were the dark blue denims that had brought out the untameable wildness in his eyes and the grey high-collared shirt that he had worn with casual nonchalance though it was open at his chest and exposed the fine contours of muscle beneath. Gone was the chokuto which had always been by his side, its blade electrifying the air

_(in almost the same way that his presence had been to her)._

Hinata tightened her grip on her kunai. The days were gone, _their _days were gone. When she looked back into the past now, she could only summon the choking smothering smoke, the inferno of hellish black and red, and the screams, the never-ending screams, as the world burned around her. And the blood – oh God, the blood.

'_Naruto!' she cried, cradling his head in her lap and shakily wiping the bloody strands of blonde hair from his feverish forehead._

Hatred flashed silver in her eyes, like lightning before the deafening thunder, and cauterised the last remnants of pity, her old encumbrance, from her heart.

Maybe she had been Lady Hyuuga Hinata once, the shy heiress of the oldest and most powerful family in the Hidden Leaf village, who stumbled her way through Ninja Academy, casted too many seeking sideway glances to her teammates, faltered in her attacks, and, above all, was pained by the suffering in other people's eyes, and even more by the disappointment in her Father's own.

But that was the world _then_, when the moon had been no more a dead rock hanging in the sky than the body of a monster, and this was the world _now_, where Hyuuga was but a name adorning the silent graves marking the ruins of a once great village.

This Hinata – and if she was still Hinata – bore no resemblance to the Hinata _then. _

Her round face had thinned to expose a determined chin, and the lips that had been so easy to smile had resolved into a firm line. Her eyebrows arched to disappear behind her fringe, giving her a pensive look, but the fineness of them added an inexplicable sadness to her face at the same time.

And, behind those strange pale eyes, there lingered an unfathomable darkness, as if someone had drawn a veil over her eyes and blocked out their light so they shone like dark moons.

It was a darkness that made her own name sound strange to her because 'Hinata' had meant 'a sunny place' and this Hinata was a creature of the shadows, an enigmatic figure cloaked in a dark grey coat.

In her nightly abodes, the secluded hostels tucked in the gloom of some hidden alleyway, she had begun to introduce herself 'Hinoiri'. A beautiful name, its meaning was 'the sun had set'.

And like the setting sun that paints a new face to the land, sweeping the earth in shades of red and drawing out the shadows that had not been there, the changes in her gave her an appearance of grim conviction, replacing the innocence and naivety (that doe-eyed look) that had defined her in her youth.

_(Of course, by age alone, she was still young; it was that she realised, and with some alarm, that of childhood, the sweet tender childhood where nobody dies, it was something that she could only look sadly back on)._

Her new appearance translated into her movements, the way she brought foes, much bigger than herself, tumbling to the floor with a single well-placed tap of her fingers, and without a single blink of her eye, and the way she was constantly on the move, slipping deftly into the shadows and the crowds, as if carried on a current that swept away all traces of her from the place.

Hinata could appreciate the irony, that she had never been a better shinobi than what she was now, when she had no friends nor family whose expectations to exceed, and when jutsu was a dying art as chakra slowly but surely drained from the face of the Earth.

And this man, chained before her, was the reason why.

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><p><strong>o<strong>

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**Apologies for the shortness of this chapter. I came back and tried to make it longer (only I ended up cutting out some scenes and making it even shorter!) but things didn't belong there just yet, so I guess that means you'll just have to wait and see what happens ;)**

**So what do you think has happened, or will happen?**

**As for my question posed in the last chapter, 'four' is a homonym for 'death' in Japanese (and Chinese too **arabmorgan**!), so, putting it together, by coinciding the execution on the fourth hour of the fourth day of the fourth month, I wanted to convey that they intended to smite Sasuke's mind, body, and soul - effectively handing out the ultimate death penalty.**

**Hope that makes things clearer, and thanks for all the kind reviews for the previous chapter!**

****~ RC Mason.****


	3. 3

Disclaimer: _Naruto _is not mine. But this story is.

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><p><strong>Vindico<br>**

**~ by RC Mason ~**

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><p><strong>3<strong>

_Vengeance is but the extraction of a price _

_Where blood, and only blood, could ever suffice._

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><p>'I knew that you would come.'<p>

The words hung in the cold air, like drops of ice, cool and emotionless as ever, ringing hollowly into the chamber.

His eyes were still closed, with a strand of jet black hair drawing a dragged line past his left cheek, and how he could have known when she was metres away and impeccably disguised … Hinata narrowed her eyes. His senses were still acute – and deadly as ever.

'It has always been a question of time, not of fact, Uchiha.'

If it was by voice alone, he would not have recognised her. A wintry edge had crept in to guild that soft voice of hers; it was still quiet but with a new-found bitterness that could not help but express itself in a tone of cynicism and malcontent.

(_In the back of her mind, the disconcerting thought came to her:_

_She was beginning to sound like him.)_

Hinata took a step forward, and, in the deathly stillness of the cell, it was unmistakable, the scuff of thick combat boots against the coarse stone floor.

'So what have you gotten planned for me? A Lion Fist? An Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms?' Faint mocking and a ghost of a smile. Almost like his old self.

_('Hinata,' he whispered.)_

The white eyes flashed silver. She barely had enough chakra to maintain her own bloodline as it is, why with everything being thrown in to restrain the monstrous being on the moon, so a semblance of free will could continue to exist on the Earth for just a little while longer – did he think that this was funny?

She swept across the cell, her long hair trailing like a dark river behind her, the ruffle of furs hailing her presence, and she saw the way he stiffened, the clench of the muscle on his jaw, when he realised that she so close, so close to him, and-

'Sasuke,' she whispered into his ear, bending over to allow her hair to grace past his face, 'there are more painful ways to die. Can you imagine?'

She slid a cool hand from under her coat to brush past the fineness of his jaw, landing innocently, softly, at the base of his throat. She felt his heart rate quicken underneath her fingertips, a subtle difference in the warm rush of blood beneath his pale skin. A part of her frowned at this – was it fear? Or something more …?

With his eyes still closed, he noted, 'No longer a lady. When did your hands become so rough?'

Hinata looked down in shock and saw how dark her own hand was against the smooth milkiness of Sasuke's neck. They had been darkened with calluses, burnt by the searing sun, and blistered raw by the freezing ice.

There was a reason why her family's secret technique had been called the Gentle Fist: it left no mark on the user. And Hinata flushed as Sasuke realised what she had been reduced to in the past months just to survive …

In a swift movement, she withdrew her hand from his neck – only to curse herself mentally for her moment of weakness. So what that she had been splintering firewood from dawn to dusk, the blunt end of her hatchet making it more work than what it was and swinging it with the brutal grimness of a peasant, that counted every cent for each lump of wood that was hacked into two and gritted through the howling of the winter wind as it bit against the skin and cast a desolate layer of white against the landscape. She was a survivor and, when shinobi were despised, she did what she had to do to get by, even if it was manual labour that the proud Hyuuga would have deemed unfitting for their heiress.

No – it was resilience. She was not ashamed of this. Rather –

_(Hadn't she hoped that she would leave a stunning impression in his mind? Like when she was standing at the top of the stairs, glowing in her violet kimono that brought out the colour in her eyes, gorgeous cherry blossoms adorning her hair that was let long and loose to ripple to her waist along with the soft layers of silk that flowed in the evening breeze, fanning out behind her like a radiating aura, and he had stood there – with _that _look in his eyes – before he had caught her and spun her around and told her that she was-)_

Hinata collected herself, and tilted up her chin.

'Suppose I told you that I have suffered a great deal,' she said coolly, 'so that it has made me bitter and cold on the inside. Suppose I came to hate the person who made me suffer so, that every morning I wake up and think: _vengeance._

What would it be to you, Uchiha?'

There was a struggle and darkness graced across Sasuke's features.

Finally, his eyes flashed open. Vivid crimson pierced Hinata to the core. A deadly chill to the room.

'You know nothing of suffering, Uzumaki.'

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><p><strong>o<strong>

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**What? What did he say?**

**What is your theory? What do you think Sasuke's feelings towards Hinata are? (And as always, reviews help me update faster ;) )  
><strong>

**Again, unfortunately, it just the way the story is that I have to keep the chapters fairly short. However, I don't know if it is just me or a function of my rapidly reducing attention span, but I've been avoiding stories with long chapters recently. I just want to get to the point and move on, and I feel better seeing more chapters breaking out monotonous lengths of text. Anyway, think of this fic as an extended one-shot and I hope that you have enjoyed it so far! Thanks for all the reviews for the previous chapters!**

**~ RC Mason.  
><strong>


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